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I’m wanting to start singapore math with my 3 (going to be 4 in october) child. I posted in the Singapore math facebook group asking about manipulatives and got a lot of push back saying she’s too young for the PREK curriculum. This doesn’t really line up with what I’ve seen here as I’ve seen at least one parent say they used singapore math to prep their children for SEES. What age did any of you guys start using a curriculum for prep? Obviously we would start with only a little bit a day!
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Using manipulatives is a fantastic method and doing a little bit a day the best choice. You are on the correct path Singapore math is excellent I also used mental math for my child when we were testing for SEES kindergarten he is now going to a Academic Center. I did the same things you are doing now.
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Thank you so much for your feedback! I was really frustrated, you’d think I’d said I was going to put a shock collar on her and zap her if she got a problem wrong by the way people responded to a question about which colored teddy bears should I buy! It was ridiculous. I was surprised to get that response from a group of parents using the curriculum.
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dont worry the shocking comes in lesson 3 LOL we are all trying to help our children do better. Its a little I mean alot crazy we have to do this as a parent who went through this craziness take your time keep fun and it will work out just fine. Dont let all the outside noise prevent you from doing great things for your child.
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You made me laugh! Seriously thanks for your response I appreciate it:
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What Facebook group? Do you mind sharing it?
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It’s just the Singapore math Facebook group linked from the company website. I deleted my post because I was sick of no one actually answering my question and figured going here was a better idea!
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I feel like for math at such a young age you don’t need to buy special stuff. Just things that can be repeated like crayons or markers, stacking toys, Duplo or LEGO toys, blocks, fingers, etc.
Yeah there is too much noise now online.
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I don’t really know anything about the curriculum at all. But wanted to comment just because I have seen all too frequently parents be not be so kind when another parent discloses that their child is working above age level. I would just recommend if you have questions for this FB group, just don’t mention your child’s age in the post. I’m presuming you are following your child’s lead and meeting them where they are at, which is wonderful. And because you are sniffing around here, you thinking your child might be gifted and therefor investigating how things are going to workout in public kindergarten. I personally like to give parents the benefit of the doubt when they ask questions. In my non professional opinion, math will come easy to most gifted children and will be picked up with limited repetitions. In our case I just let it happen in real life at first. Plenty of opportunities to teach adding and subtracting. As a matter of fact one of the most popular researchers in gifted children says that is the definition of gifted… is that takes 1-2 repetitions where it takes the average person around 8. With a gifted child they are likely truly playing all day (as that is what is developmentally appropriate) and you can ask them to figure out how many napkins they need for the dinner table. And that is that, they know early math after a few renditions of this. I don’t see anything wrong with doing a program (I wasn’t super supportive at first) but now do more formalized things with my now 4 year old. Basically for the same reason you mentioned in another post , is that it’s one thing to know math and another how to take a test. And worried they won’t be able to showcase there abilities when they see a math problem on a worksheet. Parents assume that you are bribing or forcing your children to spend a lot of time doing formal programs everyday. Which is not developmentally appropriate at all. You know what is best for your child!
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@Bpmommy, I like your approach. Both my husband and I are strong believers in play at this age (and in general), and we sent our daughter to pre-schools with play-based curricula. I am also a big fan of meeting my child where she is rather than doing rigorous daily prep, so I can share how it went for us, starting from the best outcome to the worst outcome.
1) Gifted: My daughter likes solving puzzles which was clear from an early age. For example, we have a few of the age-appropriate SmartGames because she really likes them and can spend extended periods of time engaging with them without any prompting from us. Because I was curious how she would answer “puzzles” from standard tests and because I think it’s important to know the format of potential questions, I showed her sample Kindergarten questions from https://www.testprep-online.com/ when she was around 4. I introduced the questions as games and we covered one or two sample tests per week over the course of a month (if I remember correctly each sample test has 10 questions). She loved them and every time was asking for more. She did well on most of them and missed very few which I explained. Then I decided that I shouldn’t worry too much about it and didn’t do anything more for almost a year when I asked her to do the same questions again. This was a month or two before the exam. She got all of them correctly for K and almost all of them for 1st and 2nd grade and I had nothing to do with it (besides asking the questions). In essence, our prep was introducing her to different types of questions. After the exam, she told me that she was not asked any such questions, so I still don’t know what exactly they ask but my assumption is that the questions test some of the same skills. Her RGC score is 146 and she is going to Edison. Reflecting back, I am not sure whether doing more rigorous prep in the year before her exam would have made a difference in the score but no controlled experiment there :).
2) Math: We did the napkin math type you described and introduced simple concepts in daily life. I am sure her play-based pre-schools also contributed. Her Math score was 98. Perhaps doing intentional math curriculum prep would have pushed us in the higher 90s.
3) Reading: Because I don’t push my child on any learning activities, we were also taking our time learning to read. We have always read books daily to her and she was becoming increasingly curious about reading and writing. She could read many words by the time she took the test in November but not read full paragraphs fluently. Her score on Reading was in the 70s. Doing more rigorous prep would have likely led to a different outcome but then again, if she was not ready, she was not ready. Four months after the test she started reading chapter books of her own volition (and probably also pandemic boredom), so go figure…
Anyways, that’s our personal journey and the choices we made. I feel very lucky that my child was accepted at Edison. She may be smart but so are many other kids who deserve to go there. As we know, test scores at this age do not just reflect their IQ and abilities but also how they felt on the particular test day.
I hope you and your child enjoy your journey together! Best of luck to you and @chiehei! And don’t forget that your children’s best gifts are parents who really care about them 😉 (“How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough discusses a lot of the research behind this statement).
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Age 4 is an appropriate age to introduce Mathematical concepts. See here: https://seriouslyaddictivemath.com/why_choose_sam/faq/
Singapore Math is also one of the best programs for young children to really understand math at the conceptual level rather than learning procedures through repetition.
SAM Singapore Math of Lincoln Park (https://www.samlincolnpark.com/) has both the curriculum and teaching methods to introduce mathematics in a fun and engaging way.
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